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Extraordinary Academy Award-winning Polish film about the force of history and why individual reckoning matters. Eerie, beautiful, haunting, and made somehow more potent through its silences and grey colour palette.

Filmed in soft shades of white and grey in the intimate 1.37:1 Academy ratio, writer/director Pawel Pawlikowski adapts a tragic chapter from his own family history to produce a story wherein one woman’s shaken faith comes to represent the shame of an entire nation. Moving from cloistered interiors to a world of earthly temptations, Pawilkowski’s Anna (brilliantly downplayed by newcomer Agata Trzebuchowska) is a study in forbearance and quiet suffering, her gaze perpetually downcast with only those preternaturally dark eyes betraying the upheavals within. And then, as if to highlight Anna’s humility—or bewilderment—Pawlikowski uses doorways, arches, and windows to divide the screen into discreet geometric spaces, often relegating his human characters to the lower quadrants while bare walls, open skies, and the occasional telling artwork or Catholic bauble dwarf them from above. Austere wintry settings and a soft classical score tie everything together beautifully.

Let me add my recommendation to an already long list of favorable reviews and awards for the film "Ida". A really absorbing film on two sisters search for what happened to their parents during World War II. The film is beautifully shot in black and white. The movie is gripping from start to finish. A good way to spend an evening!

Fantastic black and white cinematography. You really got a sense of the bleakness of Communist Poland. The acting was superb if you can get into the story. Other reviewers have said there is not much of a family secret - don't believe them! The secrets go deep as do the wounds.

I was a bit unsure of borrowing this movie due to the recent very negative comments. Upon watching it though, both my wife and I quite enjoyed it and would give it a 4.5. Tastes are quite subjective, but it is hard to agree with previous comments that the movie dragged on, particularly when it is an 80 minute movie. Yes, it has a slow pace, but that is a welcome change from watching endless shootings, explosions, and vehicle chases that are typical summer Hollywood fare. I am a movie buff, having watched over 2,000 movies, including almost 300 foreign films. As stated on the Roger Ebert site: "Riveting, original and breathtakingly accomplished on every level, "Ida" would be a masterpiece in any era, in any country." This film has a mass audience; for example, over 29,000 ratings on the IMDb site with average of 7.4 out of 10, and over 16,700 ratings on the "Rotten Tomatoes" site with an average of 79% "Like" rating. Also, it has a "Metacritic" rating of 91 and an AMG rating of 4.5 out of 5.

If anyone is interested, I have several movie lists (by country), plus two lists of movies from the 2,000's, on the OPL site under "GerryD".

This is a 2013 drama directed by Paweł Pawlikowski.
Although it is supposed to be a tale of moral and spiritual awakening of a young novitiate, her dark family secret is NOT dark enough.
And Ida's awakenig seems depicted quite shallowly and trivially.
It is kinda letdown.

Accompanied by her aunt, Ida who was raised in a convent
went back to her isolated home town to visit her parent's grave. A simple but powerful story from the past. A memorable quote is when Ida asked her friend about their future beyond life in the convent - See quote.